


Curtain Call

by PunkHazard



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-06
Updated: 2013-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-28 09:57:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/673114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easy to accept fate when your destiny is to have everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curtain Call

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for domestic abuse.

He still thinks about Alibaba, once in a while.

He thinks about him when Zaynab's son starves to death. 

He thinks about him when a thief cuts Hassan's eye out. 

When Kissa's brother loses his arm and then his life to gangrene; when Emir's father is killed by a royal guard for spitting on his boot and Jamila loses her hearing after her husband boxes her ears so hard she's knocked unconscious. 

(He thinks about him when he kills the sorry excuse of a man that Sayeed's become, stabs him in the same place he'd impaled his own father and he doesn't feel anything, this time.) 

Cassim thinks about Alibaba when Mariam's hand, skeletal from disease and reeking of necrosis, stops squeezing his. 

There's always been something different about Alibaba, Cassim knows; a radiant warmth enveloping him and everyone around him in soft waves of comfort. He's like his mother, Anise, the circle of her arms accepting anyone who'd step into them, soft voice and kind eyes. 

He'd wanted Mariam to have that. 

* * *

It's easy to accept fate when your destiny is to have everything. 

When hardship and pain will turn inexorably to peace and light, when the people who surround you are kind and loving and tender. It makes Alibaba easy, Cassim knows, it makes him gullible and naive, it makes him believe that the world is forgiving because he's never had reason to truly believe otherwise. Because he never saw Cassim's father beat his mother to death and he never saw Cassim's father kick him in the ribs (and only because he'd planted himself firmly in front of Mariam, who he'd been aiming for in the first place). 

And what really _gets_ him, what makes every nerve in Cassim's body throb with rage and envy, is that he knows for Alibaba, the world will always be a soft place. 

To Alibaba, the dog that bites the hand he extends is just scared. When he's bitten again, the poor mongrel is probably terrified. When he's bitten again, Alibaba won't put it out of its damn misery like any normal human being because maybe-- 

\-- maybe it needs help. 

Alibaba is an _idiot_ , Cassim knows. 

(And he believes when he's told that they can change things for the better, that they can help people. He believes that Cassim is proud and uncorrupted, determined to set things right-- 

\-- and as wrong as Alibaba is, the part of Cassim that takes his hand and pours him a drink, that can still laugh and reminisce, wants so badly for him to be right.) 

* * *

Cassim has always known his fate. 

He wonders if things could have turned out differently. 

Sometimes he thinks that he could have changed it, after his sister died. If he could have swallowed the injustice and continued on in the slums, started a proper business, found himself a wife and lived every cliche of having a family. 

(He thinks that if he had had a daughter, her name would have been Mariam and his son would have been called Ali and they would have grown up to be wealthy and successful, spoiled rotten in childhood by their uncle, the just and compassionate king of Balbadd. 

And every time, he knows it's impossible. It's not what he wants, anyway.) 

Light shines bright in darkness but it throws even deeper shadows and Cassim thinks of moths, drawn to the flame of a cooking fire, delicate wings crisping and burning in the embers. 

* * *

He was going to keep it a secret, was going to hold it close and take it with him, and it was going to remind him of who he is, who he was born from, the legacy that he inherited, that he first spilled onto the road, the first blood that he'd washed off his hands. 

Alibaba's bad habit of snatching things from him resurfaces now with a vengeance. 

He hates seeing Alibaba cry, but there's no time left. Regrets only ever pile themselves higher and deeper, and for all the unforgivable things Cassim's done, everything he'd ever neglected to say, all the doubts he's collected and sorted and discarded, he decides one last time to be selfish. 

(Cassim thinks he already knows the answer, but he asks anyway.)


End file.
